Class of 1934 Honor Roll Award

Last week I was honored to receive a teaching award from the Center for Teaching and Learning at Georgia tech – the Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: Class of 1934 CIOS Honor Roll, for Fall 2020 (last semester). This award is only given to instructors who have an 85% response rate and have top

What Does 6 ÷ ½ Represent? Why?

To calculate 6 ÷ ½, we can first convert the division into a multiplication: 6 ÷ ½ = 6 × 2 = 12. But why? What does 6 ÷ ½ represent? A problem from the Mathematics Assessment Project helps develop our understanding.

Updates To My DIY Electronic Geocaching Bracelet

After taking the geocaching bracelet that I made on a little field test last weekend, I realized there were a few silly errors in the code I wrote for this gadget. One of the smaller and yet significant errors was a missing comma between the latitude and longitude coordinates of the cache we were looking

Updating my Programmable Jam Jar Light for a Camping Trip

A few months ago I created a Jam Jar light with a programmable weatherproof RGB NeoPixel strip from Adafruit. It’s a simple, fun, interactive gadget for short camping trips that helps me see at night. Using a bit of code that I placed on a Flora micro controller, and an accelerometer and a compass, the

Making a Geocaching Navigation Device

After applying a few minor adjustments to the Adafruit NeoGeo watch Arduino code and a few months of procrastination, I’ve made a device that indicates roughly how far I am from any number of destinations that I set. All of the code I used is here on GitHub. The idea to create this little contraption

Freezing Rain in Downtown Atlanta

Midtown Atlanta today was covered in a layer of ice Wednesday morning. Where I live, near North Avenue and Piedmont, the roads were covered in an icy slush that didn’t seem to be very slippery; the few careful drivers that were on the roads were not sliding, often. I took a video of the traffic

Programming a Jam Jar Light

I’m working on a smiple LED mood light that changes colour based on its orientation to the local magnetic field and uses an accelerometer to switch the power on/off. The little contraption consists of a programmable NeoPixel strip, wired to a Flora micro controller, wired to a compass & accelerometer sensor, all powered by a

Experimenting with Group Work in On-Line Synchronous Recitations

If you are interested in knowing more about the work I do at Georgia Tech, this is a copy of a presentation (PDF) that I gave at the 2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, CA, about a year ago (a recent request for sharing copies of my slides prompted me to getting around to

It’s Snowing in Atlanta

It’s snowing in Atlanta, and for the first time since 2011 (that I’m aware of), snow is sticking to the ground. Being from Canada where snow can be found on the ground every year during the winter, the reactions and conversations I heard today were entertaining. Someone at work joked: it’s like Canada in the

Programming 80’s Bike Lights

I’m working on lights for my bicycle bag that will change colour based on my acceleration and the direction I’m moving in. The extra lights might help drivers see me at night, although the primary goal here is have fun while building and programming stuff for my bicycle, and to celebrate the 80’s in a